China's People's Daily newspaper yesterday suggested thatPegasus provided services to CCTV while Rui was a shareholder in the agency, following a Tencent report that was published on Sunday.

VanderMolen confirmed that "Pegasus was engaged by corporate sponsors involved in underwriting CCTV’s presence" at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009 and 2010. Rui is also a regular on Edelman CEO Richard Edelman's Trust Barometer panel at the annual event.

VanderMolen declined to identify the "corporate sponsors". He added that there was no commercial relationship between CCTV and Pegasus, "to my knowledge", but admitted that the PR agency "presumably" conducted normal editorial affairs with the media company.

"We would have preferred Rui’s shareholding to divest earlier than it did," said VanderMolen. "We weren’t privy to the discussions between the original shareholders. It certainly did not move at the speed with which we understood it would and we desired."

"I never had a business meeting with Rui," said VanderMolen, noting that the CCTV anchor was a "silent, non-activist investor and a minority shareholder."

Nevertheless, the speed with which Edelman has commenced an inquiry into business practices reflects the gravity of the situation. "We will conduct full fact finding and investigation and take whatever actions as are necessary, depending on what we find," said VanderMolen.